Marije Vogelzang is a pioneer in the field of eating design. After graduating from the Design Academy in Eindhoven in 2000, Vogelzang was determined to move beyond traditional food styling and create a new direction in the field of design. She developed her vision to create designs based on the verb “to eat” and became an “eating designer.” She started a catering business (now a restaurant, called Proef) in 2004 in Rotterdam and expanded to Amsterdam in 2006. 

In 2005 I was asked by Droog Design in the Netherlands to do a Christmas dinner. My initial thought was that a Christmas dinner is full of clichés. How can you design something that’s already fully designed? But in thinking of Christmas as a time when people eat together, I decided to create a simple “intervention.” I used a table with a tablecloth, but instead of putting the cloth on the table, I made slits in it and suspended it in the air, so that the participants sat with their heads inside the space and their bodies outside. This physically connects each person: If I pull on the cloth here, you can feel it there. Covering everyone’s clothing also created a sense of equality. Initially I was concerned that people would reject the experience, particularly because the participants didn’t know each other beforehand, but it actually increased their desire to relate to one another, and brought about a feeling of being in something together.